British Airways eliminates two key Gold Card benefits

Today's clearly a good day for British Airways to sneak in a couple of new changes, as most of the airline industry is keeping its eye on US and TAM joining Oneworld.

1) No more free changes and cancellations on award tickets.

One of the most powerful BA Gold benefits was to change or cancel award tickets without their service charges, which currently stands at £35 per person. This was particularly helpful as Gold members could see additional seats which Silvers and below couldn't. It meant you could speculatively ‘lock in' a ticket which you might have needed to use, and just cancel later if it turns out you didn't need it. Sadly no more.

2) No longer possible to combine Gold Upgrade For 2 and Joker vouchers

You earn the Gold Upgrade For 2 voucher when you hit 3 500 Tier Points in a single year, and the “joker” if you surpass the Gold Guest List thresholds of 2 consecutive years of 3 000 or more tier points or a single year of 5 000 tier points. The advantage of the joker meant that you could open up any seat on the plane for yourself and up to 4 other companions and book it using Avios. These would book into the revenue classes of A, D, T, B (First, Business, World Traveller Plus, World Traveller) so long as the seat was available.

Prior to today's change, you combine those vouchers and book yourself into First and pay for only Business class (and the same for lower class permutations), but this has now stopped.

It's unclear whether this is a global change or applies only to UK residents for now, but the Executive Club has certainly taken another turn for the worse.